Winter Soldier: The Bitter March 4, Wolverine 7, B-B-B-BONUS Savage Wolverine 19

Winter Soldier: The Bitter March 4
Remender (w) and Boschi (a) and Chuckry (c) and Cowles (l)

As the train goes crashing into a small village, Ran Shen and Mila manage to use a grappling hook to stay above the explosion, just as Winter Soldier and the Drain hover out of it on Bucky's jetpack. The Drain starts to open Winter Soldier's mind to his past, draining his will to live by showing him what he's become after what he'd been. Bucky is barely able to keep from killing himself but jettisons the Drain on to the village, blasting himself a bit away from his influence. The Drain calls out to Shen and Mila, appealing to Mila's desire to help people by making the villagers kill themselves and draining their willpower. When she shows herself to make him stop, he does the same to Shen, calling him out as someone whose given everything to a country he no longer believes in and citing a mission that went wrong and led to plenty of innocent deaths. As Shen is beginning to believe that he should kill himself, the Winter Soldier shows up again and punches the Drain, forcing him to flee with Mila and giving Bucky a chance to appeal to Shen for his help. As they advance, he tells Shen that his memories are blurry and that the Hydra psychic opened something up in him. When they catch up to the Drain, the psychic convinces Mila to kill herself, preferring she die than fall into enemy hands. As Shen attacks the Drain, Winter Soldier dives off the cliff and catches Mila.

I've been writing shorter reviews this week rather pointedly but between this and the earlier THUNDERBOLTS issue, I just can't stop telling you the plot. That's sometimes not a great thing because sometimes it means there's too much plot told through too much exposition and I have to relate it all for the summary to make sense. In this case (as with THUNDERBOLTS though probably more here), it's because I'm excited by the story and because so much happened in 22 pages that I want to say it all. It's a pretty phenomenal issue and it's such an interesting limited series as we get to see a Cold War-era Winter Soldier remember who he is and temporarily break out of his programming. Remender has so much happening but it never bogs him down; instead, the pacing is near-perfect and the characters all get their moment and it's all compelling. Roland Boschi's art is great and Chris Chuckry's colors complement it perfectly. Really phenomenal book and I'm sad but excited to see the way it all ends next time. This has, so far, been one of the most satisfying limited series I've read in a long time.

Total Score: 5/5


Wolverine 7
Cornell (w) and Sandoval (a) and Curiel (c) and Petit (l)

Some monkeys steal the orb that Wolverine needs to get for MI-6 before Sabretooth can get it while he plays his team and pretends that he's still trying to get the orb for Offer so he can make a deal with Sabretooth. As Sabretooth goes in pursuit of the Orb, the Hand bring Wolverine down with poisoned arrows. Faiza shows up to extract the poison and save Wolverine before withdrawing, but she can't leave before Pinch sees her and it confirms Pinch's fears about Logan. They finally get their hands on the orb and it fights Logan, who can't get the passcode, with his opposite Logan. When the doppleganger's been put down by Pinch, who, with the help of Fuel, can interact more successfully with the Orb, she and the team leave Wolverine behind. Captain Britain extracts him but Sabretooth finds Pinch and the others, kills Fuel, and shows Pinch that he has her daughter.

There's a lot of fairly interesting stuff here that's tied together by a somewhat loose few strings. The first loose string is that the orb is rather a convenient plot device of a weapon, one that announces to Pinch that Wolverine is a hero and pulls his opposite version, a feral villain, out of the ether to fight him to further confirm things (also that it needs a passcode, which is weird for an orb). The second and probably more important string for the big character moment of this issue is that I don't buy Pinch and Wolverine's relationship. Granted, Cornell may not have had a couple years to cement their relationship as something that seemed real before this arc but it still feels like their relationship was something wispy and hardly there and now it's the crux of this entire emotional journey. It feels weak from both sides so using it to raise up the entire story causes the whole thing to rather collapse. There are some interesting ideas in here and I like Sandoval's art for the story (makes things look a lot more dynamic than anything in Cornell's first WOLVERINE story and feels maybe a little more cartoonish in the action than Stegman's stuff, though Stegman didn't have as much action to draw), but it all falls somewhat flat on their relationship (and, to a lesser extent, on the convenient orb).

Total Score: 3/5


Savage Wolverine 19
Simone (w) and N. Edwards (p) and Pallot (i) and Sotomayor (c) and Petit (l)

Note: This is a b-b-b-bonus review insofar as it came out last week but I didn't get my hands on it until pretty late so I rather put it off more than I should have. So, not so much bonus as "here it is, late." Here it is either way though, SAVAGE WOLVERINE 19 written by the incomparable Gail Simone (I wrote this blurb before I read the issue so hopefully I have only good things to say about Simone afterwards)

Wolverine dreams of a home under the Northern Lights, removed from people, with Jean. Of course, it's too good to be true and Professor X communicates with him to break him out of the dream, reminding him that he and Jubilee have been captured by AIM for testing. They're trying to get a hold of where the two are but for now, he has to get out of his restraints and find Jubilee. He manages it and learns that they're under a new sedation method that makes them dream of something they really want, meaning that they don't really fight the sedation and the brain does all the work for them. Though Wolverine broke out of his, Jubilee remains attached to hers (where she's one of the most powerful X-Men, even with her powers, and Wolverine is her sidekick) even when he breaks her out. Professor X informs Logan that they're closing in and that he shouldn't break Jubilee's illusion in the fear that it's strong enough to do real damage to her mentally if she comes out unexpectedly. So Wolverine, acting like Jubilee's sidekick, follows her as she storms through the compound being ineffective. Finally she does get smart to what's really happening but, as it happened softly enough, she's okay, just a little hurt by how bad her powers are. However, as Wolverine gets blasted, she manages to hold off AIM long enough for him to recover and for them to get out of there. He cheers her up as they leave, telling her that her powers, in his eyes, are some of the best around (he harkens back to the Northern Lights as he compliments them).

It's a rather sweet issue and an overall very fun issue. One of the things that I really like about Gail Simone (though I haven't read too much by her as she's mostly with DC these days) is that she gets into the head of a character so well and that she seems to understand the humanity of a character. On top of that, she's not afraid to pull punches. In this issue, she teams Wolverine, someone who claims to be the best there is at what he does, with Jubilee, someone with the power of fireworks (the only way you can be more '80s/'90s is by dressing like Jubilee did in the '80s/'90s). Jubilee's happy place is a place where she is more powerful than she actually believes she is. On top of it, she snaps out of it and almost immediately says "my powers suck," which is rather true but also rather cutting. You don't see that sort of self-awareness from a lot of characters. On top of that, Simone cuts right to the core of things (very important for a self-contained issue) and teams Wolverine and Jubilee, two characters who don't particularly see themselves fitting in with the X-Men at any point. It's immediately a compelling story and one that instantly works. Obviously she's not the first person to team the two and it's a duo that's worked to varying degrees in the past but she dives right in and makes it her own here. Solid book, definitely worth a look.

Total Score: 4/5